Psychology
Crime and Culture
"Crime and Culture" refers to the relationship between criminal behavior and cultural influences. It explores how cultural norms, values, and beliefs can shape individuals' attitudes towards crime and influence their likelihood of engaging in criminal activities. This area of study examines the impact of cultural factors on the prevalence and perception of crime within different societies.
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8 Key excerpts on "Crime and Culture"
eBook - PDF- Anne Wade(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Society Publishing(Publisher)
8.2. CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE CULTURE AND CRIMINAL There are various studies which discover the common ground between the cultural and criminal exercises in contemporary societal life, that is, between collective behavior that is prepared around the images, style, and symbolic meaning, and that are characterized by legal and political agencies as criminal. It has been observed that numerous intersections of culture and crime have described the development of public controversies that took place in past and present, and progressively shape the experience and perspective of day-to-day life. For instance, zoot suiters and gangbangers, Robert Mapplethorpe and rap music, mediated muggings and televised anti-crime campaigns, all of these determine that the cultural and criminal procedures constantly intertwine along a range of marginality, illegitimacy, and public presentation (Figure 8.2). Cultural Criminology 166 Figure 8.2: There is an intense connection in the laws that have to be imple-mented in the various regions of the world for the formation of the better soci-ety. Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/An_ Airman%27s_hands_are_secured_behind_his_back_with_handcuffs_ during_a_riot_control_procedures_drill_DF-ST-87-11855.jpg. There are many modern confluences of cultural and criminal dynamics that force to review the conventionally discrete categories of “culture” and “crime” in the investigation and examination. There are many social clusters and events that are conventionally abstracted as “criminal” are in fact described in their day-to-day operations by subcultural meaning and style. At the same time period, there are several numbers of groups and events that are conventionally placed under the title of “culture” frequently suffer criminalization at the hands of social activists, lawful, and political authorities, and others.
- Chris Crowther-Dowey(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
The capacity to comprehend crime from lived experience and mediated versions of social reality is important, but powerful and influential groups in society, including politi-cians and policy makers, also define crime. It is shown that each method of defining crime offers a partial and limited view of the complex processes surrounding the production of definitions of crime. However, taken together they provide a complementary overview. The chapter is split into four main parts. The first provides a rudimentary answer to the question, what is crime? After providing a legalistic definition of crime, the second section shows how crime is understood in common-sense or everyday terms. It looks at five main ways in which crime is seen: on the basis of personal experience, popular press (mass media), political power, practical and professional perspectives, and theoretical perspectives. In the third part, there is a case study tracing the development of legisla-tion related to the police power of stop and search. It examines the various uses of stop and search in relation to a range of different offences, including vagrancy, street crime and terrorism. The fourth section is another case study, the Lambeth cannabis experi-ment, which explores the changing nature of drugs crime and the legislative and policy response to it. WHAT IS CRIME? – A LEGAL DEFINITION This section: ឣ considers the processes involved in defining crime according to a legal perspective ឣ demonstrates that the criminal law changes over time ឣ provides an overview of the official methods and terminology used to classify criminal offences. It is only necessary to turn on the television or glance at a newspaper to see that crime is always in the news (Jewkes, 2004). Society is awash with crime, whether it is represented in factual or fictional terms. Crime is an issue that concerns everybody in one way or another, and this is a situation that is unlikely to change.
eBook - PDFCrime, Deviance and Society
An Introduction to Sociological Criminology
- Ana Rodas, Melanie Simpson, Paddy Rawlinson, Ronald Kramer, Emma Ryan, Emmeline Taylor, Reece Walters, Alan Beckley, Chris Cunneen, Ashlee Gore, Amanda Porter, Scott Poynting, Emma Russell(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Rather, the significance of any given activity is likely to be contested and, more often than not, is a product of broader economic, political and cultural power asymmetries. In this sense, it could be said that cultural criminology often seeks to analyse the dynamic interplay between meanings that, permeating human subjectivity, come to be associated with crime and deviance and the power imbalances that structure contemporary societies (Ferrell 1999). After providing an overview of some important theories that build cultural criminology’s intellectual foundation, this chapter discusses three competing accounts of how culture and crime are connected. Following this, the chapter elucidates a handful of concepts that are central to how cultural criminologists analyse media portrayals and representations of crime and crime control. Finally, it takes a brief look at the problem of punishment, which has been a longstanding concern among critical criminologists. Specifically, the chapter will discuss how a cultural approach can help us understand concrete modes of punishment as enacted by the state. Subjectivity: A notion that recognises individuals as actors that make choices, but also as products of their historical (i.e. social, economic, cultural, political, etc) conditions. 322 Crime, Deviance and Society THE INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGY The distinct nature of cultural criminology stems, at least in part, from its rejection of ‘mainstream’ or ‘administrative’ criminology. Much administrative criminology often adopts the view that crime and deviance are problematic behaviours caused by some type of psychological pathology or failed socialisation process. The role of the criminal justice system is to find pragmatic solutions that, typically based on principles of deterrence, punishment and/or rehabilitation, prevent crime.
eBook - PDFPsychology and Crime
2nd edition
- Aidan Sammons, David Putwain(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
This being the case, it is difficult to see how consensus could be achieved among researchers about the acts they ought to be studying. Different researchers resolve this issue in different ways but many follow the suggestions of Blackburn (1993) who makes several useful recommendations. First, ‘criminal behaviour’ should be defined in terms of the conscious breaking of rules. That is, the people of interest to criminological psychology are those who know what the rules are, but do something different. This inevitably means that some chapter 2 Defining and measuring crime 8 behaviour that is legally permissible is nonetheless of interest to psychologists and criminologists whereas other behaviour that is technically criminal is not. So those who park their cars in the spaces reserved for parents with children are not com-mitting a crime but might still be of interest because there is an underlying simi-larity between this act and other acts that are illegal. This approach allows us to recognise the continuity between, for example, conduct problems in childhood and later delinquency and criminality in adolescence and adulthood. Second, Blackburn recommends that criminological psychology should focus, in the main, on crime as legally defined. The problems this raises notwithstanding, it at least offers research-ers a clear framework on which they can agree. The majority of ‘mainstream’ criminological psychologists accept this but not all. Those who adopt one of the more critical perspectives on criminological psy-chology take issue with this apparent willingness to admit, on the one hand, that ‘crime’ and ‘criminal’ are social constructs but, on the other hand, treat them as if they were natural or objective facts. Critical perspectives raise questions about how the social construction of crime relates to issues of power, gender and race in society (see Chapter 12).
- Lorelle J. Burton, Drew Westen, Robin M. Kowalski(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
CHAPTER 2 Culture and psychology Christopher Sonn, Roshani Jayawardana, Samuel Keast and Lorelle Burton LEARNING OUTCOMES After studying this chapter, you should be able to: 2.1 defne culture and outline some of the methodological challenges in the study of culture 2.2 outline the dimensions along which cultural groups may be distinguished 2.3 describe cross-cultural relations in multicultural societies and outline how culture infuences understandings of self, identities and intergroup relations 2.4 explain colonisation as an ongoing process of cultural domination and oppression that maintains hierarchies, underpins forms of othering and has psychosocial consequences for many, particularly those from Indigenous communities. CONCEPT MAP Culture and psychology Defning culture • Culture refers to the shared rules that govern behaviour; it is a flter through which we see and understand our current reality. • Cultural psychologists focus on how individuals are shaped by their culture by examining how cultural prac- tices, norms, values, meanings and social structures infuence the way people think, feel and behave. Cross- cultural psychologists focus on how culture infuences human behaviour intending to explain the similarities and differences in how people think, feel and behave across cultures. • Psychologists use several different approaches to study culture and face a number of unique challenges in the process of conducting such research. The emic perspective focuses on specifc psychological aspects of a culture. The etic perspective involves the search for commonalities or differences across cultures. Understanding culture and its context • Every culture has a set of unwritten rules that are handed down from generation to generation, and that everyone within the culture learns to abide by. Often, those rules are not apparent to people from other cultures.
eBook - PDF- Eugene McLaughlin, Tim Newburn, Eugene McLaughlin, Tim Newburn(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
Criminology has always been psychosocial, in the sense that it has had an interest in both the psychic and the social dimensions of crime from its origins over two centuries ago. More directly, there has been a social psychology of offending behaviour at least since the 1920s. But, mostly the psyche and the social have been kept apart, or utilised without a definite notion of what might be entailed in attempting to bring them together, to think of them as always simultaneously opera-tive on human behaviour, which means to think psychosocially about the object of enquiry. In the last decade or so, the term psychosocial has been explicitly defined as a particular way of theorizing the relationship between psychic and social factors, and its relevance for understanding a variety of criminological topics has been explored (Jefferson, 2002; Gadd and Jefferson, 2007a; Jones, 2008). As we shall see, this is not the same thing as a social psychology (or a psychological sociology, for that matter). This entry aims to tell the story of criminology from this early interest in the psychological and the social as distinctive approaches to the present deliberate naming of the psychosocial as a necessary approach; spell out why this matters; offer an outline of the principles involved in thinking psychosocially and a theoretical sketch of the subject based on such principles; explore the methodological implica-tions of this psychosocial turn; and conclude with some of the unresolved theoretical issues. CRIMINOLOGY AND ITS MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ORIGINS There are a number of ways of telling criminology’s story.
eBook - PDF- Leslie Holmes(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Edward Elgar Publishing(Publisher)
Apparently low rates of OC activity in such states, when this seems to be at odds with popular perception, may thus relate to the fact that crimes are simply not being reported to the police. PSYCHO-SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CAUSES 81 5.2.6 Questioning or redefining the cultural approach According to Martin O’Brien (2005), there is what its proponents see as a current paradigm shift in the study of crime, called “cultural crimi- nology”. He cites a definition of this from Keith Hayward and Jock Young (2004: 259): the placing of crime and its control in the context of culture; that is, viewing both crime and the agencies of control as cultural products – as creative constructs. While sensitivity to cultural difference might appear to be a good thing, O’Brien argues forcefully that it has gone too far, and that focusing on subjectivity, such as including emotion in explaining crime, overlooks the fact that criminals in any culture often make decisions based on rational choices. He thus urges caution in going too far down this path, and reveals himself to be more in favour of hard-nosed empirical main- stream approaches, which cultural criminologists themselves often criticise for being “conservative”, too quantitative, and too positivistic. O’Brien maintains that much of cultural criminology is confused and contradictory, politically-driven (left-wing, sometimes anarchistic), and fails to make persuasive links between the actions of individual criminals and the cultural context in which they operate. Indeed, he argues, cultural criminologists have not even adequately and clearly defined what they mean by culture. In short, O’Brien’s critique of the relatively new cultural approach to criminology reveals that the latter is still far from being generally accepted among criminologists, some of whom see it as merely “trendy”, and both less original and less schol- arly than its advocates maintain.
eBook - PDFSociology
The Essentials
- Margaret L. Andersen; Howard F. Taylor, Margaret Andersen, Howard Taylor(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Groups such as Alcoholics Anony-mous, Weight Watchers, and various twelve-step pro-grams help those identified as deviant overcome their deviant behavior. These groups, which can be quite effective, accomplish their mission by encouraging members to accept their deviant identity as the first step to recovery. Crime and Criminal Justice The concept of deviance in sociology is a broad one, encompassing many forms of behavior—legal and illegal, ordinary and unusual. Crime is one form of deviance, specifically, behavior that violates particu-lar criminal laws. Not all deviance is crime. Deviance becomes crime when institutions of society designate it as violating a law or laws. Criminology is the study of crime from a scien-tific perspective. Criminologists include social sci-entists such as sociologists who stress the societal causes and treatment of crime. All the theoretical perspectives on deviance that we examined ear-lier contribute to our understanding of crime (see ◆ Table 7.2). According to the functionalist perspec-tive, crime may be necessary to hold society together. By singling out criminals as socially deviant, others are defined as good. The nightly reporting of crime on television is a demonstration of this sociological function of crime. Conflict theory suggests that disad-vantaged groups are more likely to become criminal. Conflict theory also sees the well-to-do as better able to hide their crimes and less likely to be punished. Symbolic interaction helps us understand how peo-ple learn to become criminals or come to be accused of criminality, even when they may be innocent. Each perspective traces criminal behavior to social condi-tions rather than only to the intrinsic tendencies or personalities of individuals. ◆ Table 7.2 Sociological Theories of Crime Functionalist Theory Symbolic Interaction Theory Conflict Theory Societies require a certain level of crime in order to clarify norms. Crime is behavior that is learned through social interaction.
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